Bahrain GP Stroll: It wasn’t easy today

FERRARI QUICKEST IN FP1 AND FP2. LANCE STROLL 18TH AND 17TH.

Ferarri were back on form today in Bahrain with Charles Leclerc topping the time sheets in FP1 with a time of 1m30.354s, Vettel came in second 0.263s from Leclerc’s time. In the second practice, it was Vettel who came out the quickest with a time of 1:28.846s to head Leclerc by 0.035s.

As for SportPesa Racing Point, it was a difficult day with finding the balance of the car. The team electing to test new aero and mechanical updates on the cars.

Lance recorded a time of 1:33.518s in first practice and improved to a 1:31.129 in second practice. “It wasn’t easy today. We need to review the data and work hard to understand where we can find some more performance”, Lance mentioned. “The first session was very busy with big changes to the car – running different aero parts – and trying to understand the best direction for the rest of the weekend. We know it’s very competitive in the midfield so we have to find some speed tonight if we are to be in the top ten tomorrow.”

Sergio Perez ended in 14th place in each of FP1(1:32.885s) and FP2(1:30.716) sessions: “It’s been a challenging day to start our Bahrain weekend. We need to work hard to find a few tenths overnight and improve the balance of the car, otherwise it’ll be very difficult to reach Q3. Sergio continues: “The sessions earlier in the day, FP1 and FP3, are not that relevant because the temperatures are so much higher than what we expect for qualifying and the race, so the opportunities to work on the set-up are limited. We tried lots of things on the car today, which will help our learning in the long term, and we collected all the usual tyre information ahead of the race.”

Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer brought a bit more precision as to defining today’s program at the Bahrain GP: “As always in Bahrain the early practice session was run in very hot conditions and wasn’t really representative of the conditions we will experience for qualifying and the race. As such, we elected to treat FP1 largely as a test session to evaluate some different aero and mechanical updates. We split the items between the cars, carried out some floor changes during the session, and continued to learn about the car. Our performance during the evening session suggests we are a bit on the back foot with the car balance so there’s plenty of work to do tonight.”